But only a disdainful pinprick! Surfs first South African winter in fourteen years…

In the second of a series of five-minute films, the South African superstar Jordy Smith, who turns thirty-four at his next birthday, reveals how he and his wife extracted themselves from America just as that country was starting to reek with COVID; a fundamentally grim place to be for a boy and his girl from Cape Town.

A flight to Johannesburg followed by two weeks in a hotel room that had a way of extracting his vitality, like clotting blood; this little airless box soon filled with a combined odour of clam shells, salt marshes and sicking brews, much like an unwashed corpse.

But enough with the niceties!

A thirteen-hour drive and Jordy is home in Cape Town, bobbing like a cork in as good waves as you’ll anywhere in the world.

“In the South African winter you don’t want to be anywhere else but right there,” he says.

Next episode: Watch Jordan play with danger at Jeffreys Bay!

"Even when the conditions are shit, riding waves is the best thing in the world," says Dane.

Dane Reynolds, the thirty-six-year-old father of three and former world number four surfer from Bakersfield in California,  has released his latest riposte to what he calls the WSL’s “pandering bullshit.”

The eleven-minute short, called Literally and hosted, ad-free, on Vimeo, is lovingly arranged and contains the flavours of all the local surfers that Dane can draw upon, although he quickly outshines the product. 

“Even when the conditions are shit, riding waves is the best thing in the world,” he writes.

Original and delightful, as always, and, as always, a world away from the culty and churchy WSL. 

Daddy-hood, the Olympic thing, banged up knee, the compelling and perennial joys of a patriarchal monogamous marriage etc. 

In the first of a series of five-minute films, the South African superstar Jordy Smith, who was unable to hustle his shoeshine box at the Tokyo Games cause of a date with a knee surgeon, has revealed “the incredible highs and devastating lows experienced in his life over the past 18 months.” 

Daddy-hood, the Olympic thing, banged up knee, the compelling and perennial joys of a patriarchal monogamous marriage etc. 

“In Episode 1, Jordy finds himself locked down in Hawaii when the world begins to shut down. Fortunately, the forecast showed non-stop swells approaching the North Shore where Jordy spends the next 2 weeks scoring firing waves before being forced to board a repatriation flight back to South Africa.”

The right touches on the right button.

An indispensable elevator to raise the phallus.

Essential.